Doing Hard Time

The Case Of Kemba Smith

February 20, 2000|By LIBBY COPELAND The Washington Post

It's hard to explain things when you don't entirely understand them yourself, but that's what mothers do. And so, when the boy visits Danbury every couple of months, Kemba Smith experiences the toughest part about being a mother - explaining.

When he was 3, Kemba told her son she was on "timeout." "I hung around with the wrong crowd in school," she said. "I made mistakes."

But right around his fifth birthday last December, he began to get mixed up. All this talk about guns and drugs. He came up with the theory that Mommy shot someone.

At which point she cried, and then lifted him onto her lap - because you can do that in a minimum security federal prison - and explained that she never hurt anyone, but her boyfriend did, and that's the reason why she's here.

Tougher to answer the adults. In letters they ask her why she didn't leave the man who beat her. They ask her why she committed crimes. Tougher to answer, except to say the reasons seem intertwined.

The worst letter was the one that said, "I deserved what I got."

Twenty-four and a half years. That's what Kemba Smith got. She pleaded guilty to conspiracy in a cocaine ring, although she never sold or used the drugs. She pleaded guilty after covering and lying and breaking the law for her boyfriend, who was leading the drug ring, who was also pummeling her off and on for three years.

She pleaded guilty in a nation where the drug war is so intense that a low-level participant in a drug operation stands to lose as much as its kingpin. The severity of her sentence, called into question even by a judge who has turned down her appeals, is largely the result of a potent combination of mandatory minimums and federal sentencing guidelines.

And now, Kemba Smith, 28, sits in federal prison in Connecticut with 19 years to go on a sentence of 241/2 years. Twenty-four and a half. That's about four years more than the average state sentence for murder or voluntary manslaughter. That's at least 15 more years than the average state sentences for sexual assault, aggravated assault and robbery. That's hard time.

Kemba's story is the sinking trajectory of a young woman born to advantage and remarkable vulnerability in the suburbs of Richmond, who made a few flightless hops toward adolescent rebellion during college, and then found herself a man. He was, as it turned out, very much the wrong man. The way Kemba tells it, it was just a short slide from love to fear, and from fear to helping, running.

Here is an old photograph. Kemba sits beside her boyfriend, Peter Hall, on her parents' couch on Christmas Day, 1991. Kemba seems relaxed, her head cocked to the side. Peter - who looks far younger than his 28 years - is not quite smiling. When this picture was taken, Kemba's parents didn't yet know the rap on this young man, who had once choked their daughter till the blood vessels bloomed in her cheeks.

Now, nine years later, the family left behind - Kemba's mother and father, Kemba's 5-year-old son - sit in that same spot in the living room, looking over old photos.

"Why did you bring him in the house if he was a drug dealer?" Armani asks, of the man in the picture, who is also his father.

Ever since her case was featured in a 1996 issue of Emerge magazine, Kemba Smith has been a cause celebre whose supporters proclaim her a blameless victim. Her parents crisscross the country, telling her story to anyone who might listen. On the Web site devoted to Kemba's cause, and in the speeches that her father gives, young women are warned that Kemba's misfortune could befall them, too, if they make the mistake of falling in love with the wrong guy.

But the truth of why Kemba Niambi Smith fell in love with Peter Michael Hall - and stayed, while he pulled her down with him - is more complicated than bad luck in love.

In high school, say Kemba's parents, Gus and Odessa Smith, their only child seemed well adjusted and obedient. She grew up in a protective middle- class home in Glen Allen, the child of an accountant and a teacher. She was an unspectacular student, but loved playing flute in the band and singing in the church choir. She attended vacation Bible school, obeyed her parents' 8 p.m. curfew.